


Wonder

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 23:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15982523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: She never expected to like anything about a spoiled princess, who spent her whole life cozied up in a tower, never wanting for anything, while Crowe grew up needing anything just to stay alive.And yet, here she was.





	Wonder

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/177912601247/croweluna-i-never-liked-the-rain-until-you) for #30 in [this prompt post.](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/176527688947/collectivemood)

“I never liked the rain until you.”

To be perfectly honest, she never expected to like one damn thing about the Lady Lunafreya. Which made her some sort of treasonous, vile, immigrant dissenter, of course; lending proof to what Insomnia had always assumed about her and her people. That they were a pack of ungrateful ingrates, infesting their silver city like rats with the scourge, and turning their faces away from the world’s most beloved figurehead in deliberate disrespect for all that their country had done for them.

Because who in Lucis – in all of Eos – wasn’t in love with the Oracle princess? Who would ever dare to resent her, if not a potential terrorist, a rebel against the royal family, or an Imperial sympathizer? Or worse! A displaced orphan with a penchant for pyromania at the snap of her fingertips?

Crowe really didn’t care, one way or the other, for royalty. She didn’t devote her energy into deference, nor likewise, into bitterness. She didn’t hate the King like Libertus did; she didn’t love him like Nyx did. Maybe that didn’t exactly make her popular with the patriots among their merry band of misfits, but indifference seemed like a more productive use of her time than taking a side in something so fruitless.

It wasn’t like her opinion on the matter would change anything.

“I find that surprising,” Luna laughed, lightly, and Crowe almost thought she’d been answering her thoughts, rather than responding to her words. “It rains so rarely in Tenebrae. I hardly know what to do with it.”

Crowe shrugged. “Not a whole lot to do. You just kinda sit inside and do nothing while waiting for it to be over.”

Well, that was true for most Insomnians, at least. In the too-short years she’d lived in Galahd, rainfall had been celebrated, rather than fled. She never fully understood the festivities which sprouted up with every storm cloud, try though Libertus might have to explain it to her for so many of those short years. She eventually just simplified it for herself with the explanation that Galahdians just really liked to party. Any excuse to make some food and keep each other company, they’d make it.

Libertus insisted that there was more tradition behind these things than that. Nyx, on the other hand, didn’t disagree with her – usually with a beer in hand and an urge to dance, tapping his foot against the wet sands while the music played.

Crowe had never really liked the rain, whether her brothers thought it was a cause for celebration or not. She never liked how heavy it made her clothes feel when she got caught in a downpour without an umbrella on her way home from work. She never liked the plastered chill of it on her skin that lingered long after she’d sequestered herself indoors to wait out the remainder of the deluge. She never liked how sullen it made the world look, all washed out and gray, draining out all the color like a bucket of water on an oil painting.

Nyx used to tease her, when she came home bedraggled and bereft of warmth to dry her, that she must have hated the rain so much because fire and water did not mix. And she was a firebrand alright – “ _don’t you forget it, hero_ ” – never meant to be doused, always meant to rage on. When it rained, it extinguished her whole spirit, leaving her with all the energy of a steam-cloud floating sluggishly between the alleys.

“Surely we can find _something_ to do,” Luna teased, smiling over at her in that totally innocent, yet totally _not_ way that constantly had Crowe questioning whether or not she was misinterpreting her expressions. “A day doesn’t need to go to waste due to a little rain.”

See, it was shit like that which made Crowe _wonder._ Little, inconsequential observations that clicked into her brain and made her ask herself, “ _Does it? Does it really not need to be a waste? How?_ ”

Crowe used to hate questions like that, too. Questions were indicative of doubt, and she had no room in her life for those. She needed certainty, which was a tall order in a world at war. After an uncertain adolescence, fleeing from destruction and never knowing if she’d escaped one catastrophe only to meet her own just around the next bend… well. Could the world really blame her for needing a little bit of unquestioning clarity in her life?

And yet, here she was, doing just that. Two weeks into guarding the Oracle on her journey to awaken the Astrals, and the woman had her questioning the profundity of a little rainfall. _What the hell?_

It was hard not to wonder, especially when she pulled shit like _that._ _That_ right there, standing on the balcony of the Leville, reaching a hand out beyond the border of the awning to catch the raindrops in the palm of her hand, looking like the portrait of some long dead queen mounted in an Accordon museum.

Now, why would anyone do that? What was there worth catching in a little bit of rainwater? What was there worth _doing_ when it was raining, and the whole hot city of Lestallum was just as dampened by the rain as Crowe’s own soul? Where was the fascination in a few cold drops of water on the back of her hand, as Luna upturned her palm to spill the silver pool of rain in her hand, experimenting instead with the feel of it pattering between her knuckles?

“Do you find me strange?”

“…Hm?”

“You’re staring, Lady Altius.”

If anything could break Crowe’s absent concentration, it was being referred to as “Lady.” No matter how many times she insisted that Luna just call her by her name, the Princess insisted on honoring her rightful title as a knight of the Kingsglaive. She said that it was all out of the respect she deserved for her station, but Crowe had a feeling it was more out of spite for never calling her by the name “Luna” like she kept insisting, too.

“Just wondering,” Crowe grumbled, averting her stare to her empty palms, unconsciously trying to call back the fire in her veins that seemed to have died with the old king. “What is there to do when there’s nothing left…”

Crowe couldn’t bite down on the words quick enough to keep them in. She wasn’t one for melancholy. She wasn’t one for mourning. She had no room for doubts, and yet… Since traveling with Luna, since the future had become so murky behind the screen of smoke from Niflheim’s warships and the Kingsglaive’s betrayal… She was questioning a lot of things she’d thought she’d always have an answer for.

Luna appeared within the frame of Crowe’s sight like a glint of light off a windowpane, gleaming in from nowhere to warm the tips of her fingers with a touch where the fire had been stolen from them.

“We have everything left,” she promised her. “The rain will pass. It always does.”

“How would you know?” Crowe chuckled. “It never rains in Tenebrae.”

Luna smiled, that soft, simple smile that filled Crowe with so much wonder. “I said it _rarely_ rains in Tenebrae. We might not see it as often as Lucis, but we know how to weather the storms. Though I think you’re much more experienced in that regard than I.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Princess.”

“I’m counting on it,” Luna said. “We have a long way to go.”

Crowe wasn’t used to being surprised, but once more she found herself on the opposite side of things she’d once been so sure of. She never expected to like anything about a spoiled princess, who spent her whole life cozied up in a tower, never wanting for anything, while Crowe grew up needing anything just to stay alive.

And yet, here she was. Liking the way Luna looked at the rain, intrigued by the questions every word out of her mouth made Crowe want to ask, even liking the way she surprised her with these chaste little kisses in her silent times of crisis. Small, soft things, awarding her an affection she didn’t think she deserved for the colossal failure of her mission to whisk the Princess away to avoid this whole journey in the first place.

“We have much to do,” Luna reminded her. “We can’t let a little rain stop us now.”

Easy enough for the moon not to fear the rain. Harder for the fire. But with little sparks of light like that warming her soaked bones from the inside-out, maybe she could burn on just long enough to last this one storm.


End file.
